


safekeeping

by iimpavid



Series: unfinished duet [9]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Kidnapping, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 09:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21134375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: Peter braced himself as well as he could, glad he wasn’t hogtied, and rode out the trip to wherever it was the Urianian mob saw fit to dump him-- not out an airlock, clearly, or they’d’ve done that already





	safekeeping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voidteatime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidteatime/gifts).

> This is far in the future of the "unfinished duet" series.
> 
> Unbeta'd and posted immediately before work so be nice to me y'all.

The interior of the trunk smells faintly of cedar. The real stuff, not manufactured, and it’s almost a compliment to wake up in such expensive accommodations. But it’s unlined and rough against the skin of Peter’s knuckles where they’re bound behind his back. All the sanding in the world couldn’t make wood soft enough for a whole night in the cargo hold of a freight liner. Fortunately, his arms had recently gone numb, a relief after the cramping, and he couldn’t tell whether his hands hurt either.

At least not until the trunk holding him was unceremoniously thrown down a staircase. That’s how it felt from the inside, anyway. 

Peter braced himself as well as he could, glad he wasn’t hogtied, and rode out the trip to wherever it was the Urianian mob saw fit to dump him-- not out an airlock, clearly, or they’d’ve done that already. He figured he was supposed to suffer instead which meant either drowning or this was just particularly rude transportation to some wilderness where he would be made example of. Being hunted for sport was right out, at least. He doubted he’d be able to convince his knees to let him stand upright, given his current state as a living bruise, let alone run. 

* * *

For a great many Uranians graverobbing was a capital offense.

Except-- and this was the case nearly everywhere in the system-- for debtors of a certain caste. For significant enough debt their bodies were their collateral. At an average net price of 550 million per corpse, once all its parts were sold off, no one wanted to take out a debtor.

* * *

There wasn’t much Peter hadn’t done to protect his heart in the twenty years he'd had it. The filter grown into its walls kept him alive, after all. It was worth any price. Up to and including murder, betrayal, and a great many things stolen for service fees he didn’t get to keep. He thought he could pay it back, then outrun it, and then find someone to keep him company while he died. None of that quite worked out. 

Staring down forty and the end of his loan period his options were: let Invictus Inc. pull his filter out of his chest (a slow death by radiation poisoning in debtors' prison) or keep running and let the filter shut down on its own (a faster death, by cardiac arrest, all alone). He wasn't spoiled for choice.

And then Hieron bought his debt.

* * *

The trunk dropped onto solid ground. Peter bounced. Lucky him, the gag kept his teeth from hitting each other too hard. He wasn’t sure his pride could tolerate chipping a tooth after all this.

Then there came, muffled through the trunk’s lid and a long night, a familiar cadence, “If you’ve damaged him, you’ll be fined for vandalism,” all brittle outrage conjuring images of palette knives.

The thugs dropping Peter off-- back on Mars, apparently, right on Hieron’s doorstep like any misplaced package-- laughed at them. Then threw the trunk open and tipped it over. Peter tumbled out with a surprised grunt, red-faced and furious, even in the sudden blindness of daylight. “Be thankful the boss left his hands attached. Keep better track of your things.” They left, still laughing.

Hieron was gentle untying him. Gag first, ankles, wrists. Mindful not to jostle him too much. “You know, I’d hoped I would see you again, but not shipped back in a box.” 

“I couldn’t justify the expense to fly first class.” 

Hieron let him lie there on their blessedly cold floor and stew while he convinced his body it could and in fact should unfold itself. He heard water running. Close by. One of the downstairs bathrooms, clearly, he noted the location with a little confusion. Then realized Hieron was probably drawing him a bath. It made something in his chest that had very little to do with the filter grafted into his heart clench. 

The year after Hieron took on his debt he’d spent in orbit around Venus and adamantly pretending none of it ever happened. From his position on Hieron’s floor, listening to water run elsewhere in the penthouse, he considered, maybe, Pluto this time. Or another system. Or maybe he could talk his way onto the an Andromedan mining venture and leave the galaxy in his dust entirely.

He tugged off his boots and left them right there in the middle of the foyer, next to the trunk he’d been shipped in.

* * *

It wasn't something they had talked about. Not really. Not after that first night. He had stood in Hieron's living room having fled the entire crew of the Carte Blanche. There was a duffel bag by the door with stolen goods worth more than he’d ever seen in his life. With a fresh blaster burn on his back, livid at nothing and everything and most of all himself, he bled the history of the heart in his chest all over Hieron's Orrish rug.

And Hieron had listened, bright-eyed and unblinking and told him, as soon as he'd finished because they'd known what they were going to say from the start: "I'll pay it off." 

" _ You _ can't afford it." The laugh he let out was sharp and broken and scarce inches away from hysterics. "Nova Zolatovna,  _ she  _ might, but something tells me she's not feeling generous where I'm concerned."

A beat passed then, "Debt collectors sell off delinquent loans all the time-- for pennies-- I'll buy  _ that _ . Then they can't shut it down or repossess it. It'll be  _ mine _ ." 

The ice in Peter's drink clinked and jittered against the glass-- his hand was shaking. "I won't come back." 

"I wouldn’t ask you to. And I would never follow you." 

He nodded for half a minute before he could say, "Alright. Alright, do it," walked right back out of Hieron's penthouse. He thought up a new name in the elevator and left for Venus the next day. 

* * *

Hot water was one of Peter’s favorite things and, soaking off the dust and grime of being shipped like so many spare parts, he was sure he’d never loved it quite so much. “I’m giving serious thought to becoming aquatic,” he told Hieron, “I hear there’s surgery for it.” 

They lounged beside the tub, leaning with their arm propped on its edge, fingers dangling into the water. They looked up from the ripples in the water’s surface that’d enthralled them for the last several minutes. “You haven’t had your fill of surgeries?” 

The incision down his sternum from all those years ago (New Kinshasa had stuck around in so many indelible ways) had healed straight and centered, bisecting his chest perfectly. A small mercy, that symmetry. Surgery had, in retrospect, gotten him here in the first place. “Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t-- it’s all on your dime these days, Mx. Dolce,” he teased, and sank below the water again, ostensibly to enjoy the weightlessness that came with Hieron’s ridiculously large bath and not at all to avoid eye contact. 

“Tell me, my paradox, how  _ did  _ you get on the wrong side of the Uranian mafia?” 

That made him bristle. “They didn’t tell you?” 

“They didn’t exactly call ahead for the delivery. It’s a lucky thing I was home.” 

“I got caught, isn’t it obvious?” Peter flexed his hands beneath the water despite how moving stung his raw knuckles. But he could do and be better than his own wounded pride and he knew it. And Hieron, watching him with one cheek pillowed on their forearm, knew it too. So he elaborated, “Wennifred Orange is dead, you know her don’t you? I think she associated briefly with the Kanagawas? Anyway, I happened to be on Umbriel for the funeral and I thought to myself, _ she’s not going to miss that fossilized arconid shell necklace that belonged to her hag of a mother in law _ … so I took it. As it turns out, her husband felt differently and had a great many more eyes on the wake than I’d thought. Uranians are so serious about their funerals.”

“So tight-laced,” Hieron agreed.

“You should keep a closer eye on your mail, though. You have jewelry due to arrive sometime next week.” 

They smiled and Peter found he could relax again. “I do love it when you bring me presents.”

* * *

A month into his sabbatical, Venusian socialite Lincoln Quilici received a certified letter from Dolce Debt Collective, LLC apropos of nothing. They were informing him, should he ever find himself curious to know, that the Invictus Cardiac Filter Serial number 294-zl-1208 belonging to the Brahmese citizen Peter Nureyev was now in their possession. They felt Mr. Quilici should know that he, Peter Nureyev, owed them nothing for the device and he, Peter Nureyev, could contact the number in the postscript for any repairs or concerns. If the letter had been received in error then he, Lincoln Quilici, was encouraged to destroy it as no return service was necessary, anyway, and this was just for his edification. 

The CEO of Dolce Debt Collective, LLC,  _ Hieron _ , had signed (and, he suspected, written) it themself. 

Lincoln left his cabin and waited outside the luxury liner’s gift shop for three hours until it opened just to buy the tackiest magnet set they had and overnight it to Valles Marineris. 

* * *

Waking up happened more often in stages the last several years. A slowness he’d attributed to dying but was beginning to think might just have been natural. First Peter knew by the faint smell of astringent and lavender that he was in Hieron’s bed. Then the warm light behind his eyelids told him the sun was up and had been that way a while. The faint movement of Hieron’s breathing informed him he’d managed to wrap himself around them when he slept. The aching weight in his limbs might have been a clue he’d overslept or else was, in fact, developing arthritis or perhaps both. 

Without his glasses, he could focus about as far as Hieron’s shoulder— the notches of their spine were a memory in his fingers, rather than a gesture he could make out on the landscape of their back. Everything beyond it was a quiet blur. He liked their bedroom best like this, seen from the bed, in soft focus. 

He hid a kiss in their hairline and slipped from their bed in practiced silence. The floor only marked his presence by his footprints. 

One of Hieron’s dogs— barely dogs, human-heavy robots built for security and designed after Earth’s wolves— padded over to investigate him as he puttered about the kitchen. Peter patted its head as gently as he could, in a way that went with the grain of the skill plates, hoping it felt nice. “I hope there aren’t any hard feelings. I only ever do what I must.” 

They were robots and had likely been upgraded since the time, years ago, when he’d found himself having to fry their circuitry or lose a limb. The odds they recalled or felt any kind of way about the recollection were slim. Still, he wanted to befriend them. They took care of Hieron. 

“I don’t suppose you know where they keep their tea, do you?” 

The hound laid down on before the stove and yawned. The sunlight glinting of its metalloid teeth made his eyes water.. 

“Hm, yes, illuminating, thank you,” he said, though it wasn’t in the least bit true. 

Eventually, he found the tea. He couldn’t cook, true, but he could manage to boil water now and again. While it heated he coaxed his bruised and aching body through a series of stretches until things stopped popping and shifting where they shouldn’t. Until the ache in his chest eased and he could breathe a little better. He poured Hieron and himself each a cup of tea and brought them both back upstairs to bed. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I've ever edited a single fic in my life but on rare occasions, I do finish things. In this case, it's because Em (voidteatime) came up with someone who might be my favorite OC. Go read their fic, [Juno Steel and the Walking Portrait of Zarathustra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20735828/chapters/49264889) , for more Hieron.
> 
> This is part of a larger universe where Peter has, in fact, been acquainted with Hieron for years. This probably won't be the last y'all see of it since I figure the broader context might make this a tad more compelling.


End file.
